Field of the Invention
The invention relates to steerable wheel sides of a drive axle for heavy crane vehicles or the like, having a knuckle support which is arranged in a steerable manner at an axle guard of a middle axle section and which has a knuckle axially passed through by a drive shaft part, at which a wheel hub and/or a hub carrier having a wheel hub gear is rotatably supported, with the wheel hub gear being drive-connected to the drive shaft part at an input side.
Description of the Prior Art
Axles which are configured as drive axles and which have Ackermann steering for heavy freight vehicles and/or special-purpose vehicles regularly have steerable wheel sides of the initially named kind.
Such axles are inter alia used for heavy vehicles, for example for crane vehicles, usually with 25 inch tires. In this respect, multi-part rims have so far been required its order to be able to mount the tires typical of such vehicles, on the one hand, and to be able to provide sufficient construction space for the brake system, on the other hand. Since the axle loads which are permissible in road traffic are limited, powertrains, with a small weight are generally aimed for. Having regard to weight-critical cases of application, expensive, dismantlable aluminum rims are customary in this connection. This is where the invention comes in, in that it is proposed not to replace the customary multi-part steel rims with multi-part aluminum rims in case of weight problems, but rather with integrally formed drop center rims which can also be composed of steel in cases that are weight-critical. In addition to a substantial cost advantage, such rims provide the advantage of a particularly high robustness which is desirable above all in rough conditions of use.
However, the use of drop center steel rims has previously failed in that the spatial conditions at a drive axle having Ackermann steering does not permit the use of disk brakes (preferably actuated by compressed air). This is because in contrast to the multi-part dismantlable rims which can have a very flat rim base due to their dismantling capability, a sufficient accommodation space for disk brakes dimensioned in accordance with the conditions of use of the respective vehicles is not available radially within the drop center steel rims, with the additional difficulty that the customary 25 inch tires require a particularly deep drop center for their mounting.